PIOPPI (POLLICA), ITALY - 5 OCTOBER 2016: Delia Morinelli (79) poses for a portrait in front of local vegetables, fruits and olive oil in the terrace of her home, which recently opened to the public for lunch and dinner in Pioppi, a hamlet in the municipality of Pollica, Italy, on October 5th 2016. Starting in the 60's, Delia Morinelli was the cook of Ancel Keys, the American scientist who studied the influence of diet on health and the promoter of the Mediterranean Diet.

To understand how people can live longer throughout the world, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have teamed up with colleagues at University of Rome La Sapienza to study a group of 300 citizens, all over 100 years old, living in Acciaroli (Pollica), a remote Italian village nestled between the ocean and mountains in Cilento, southern Italy.

About 1-in-60 of the area’s inhabitants are older than 90, according to the researchers. Such a concentration rivals that of other so-called blue zones, like Sardinia and Okinawa, which have unusually large percentages of very old people. In the 2010 census, about 1-in-163 Americans were 90 or older.